Tata Steel signs MoU with AUS, a Bengaluru based drone start-up to jointly create sustainable end-to-end Mining solutions

~ The MoU reinforces the Company’s commitment towards responsible and sustainable mining practices ~

Tata Steel has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Aarav Unmanned Systems (AUS), a Bangalore-based startup providing end-to-end drone solutions, on July 22, 2022 for effective mine management.

The primary goal of this collaboration is to jointly develop and offer sustainable & end-to-end integrated solutions that will focus on the efficiency, safety, and productivity of open cast mining operations. Tata Steel will also work jointly with AUS to provide exclusive drone-based solutions including mine analytics and geo-technical mapping, to Tata Steel group companies across various stocks and mining locations in India.

On the partnership, D. B. Sundara Ramam, Vice President, Raw Materials, Tata Steel, said: “We are excited to work with AUS again, this time for a longer duration and with a broader vision of sustainable development. Drone survey enabled digitalisation and other technology will assist in gathering impactful and actionable insights. We see enormous potential in redefining core mining processes such as exploration and mine planning using drone data and adequate analytics. These end-to-end mining solutions are economical, demand fewer on-foot exploration requirements, and improve production, efficiency, and site safety. We also intend to offer our learnings to the rest of the world's mining companies as a professional solution from our fully owned unit, Tata Steel Industrial Consultancy Limited.”

Tata Steel, as a global and diverse mining company, is committed to ensuring sustainable mining across all its global operations. All its key mining sites are certified under EMS ISO 14001, the international environmental management standard. Tata Steel has also adopted a holistic business model that looks at the entire value chain comprising Steel Value chain: from captive mining to downstream steel businesses, Raw Materials Value Chain: the mining of chrome and manganese ore to production and sale of ferro-alloys & minerals and Other Businesses: Such as equipment manufacturing, bearings, and agricultural equipment manufacturing. The Company also aspires to leverage the opportunities arising from the Government’s “Atmanirbhar Bharat” Programme and regulatory changes to meet captive raw material requirements beyond 2030 by creating a sustainable mining business.

The Noamundi Iron Mine of Tata Steel has also recently been accorded 5-Star rating for sustainable development for the year 2020-21. This is for the sixth time in a row that Noamundi Mine has received this honour. The mine was accorded 5-Star rating in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 as well.

Tata Steel, a mining major, had charted out its vision a couple of years ago to become a leading player in digitalising its mining operations across the value chain. Digitalisation enables the development of targeted strategies using real-time data and data analytics, provides visualisation and decision matrix tools to predict failure, helps in optimisation of scheduling and material flow, and improves the capability of beneficiation plants through online monitoring of quality data. It also helps in improving productivity through real time monitoring of equipment, plant and operator performance and sweating of capital-intensive mining equipment.

AUS has been working closely with the steel sector behemoth to provide state-of-the-art drone technology to modernise its mining operations. The latest contract will focus on using remote mine monitoring to improve efficiency, safety, and productivity of the mines.

Commenting on the partnership, Vipul Singh, Founder and CEO, Aarav Unmanned Systems, said: “Tata Steel is one of the world’s leading steel companies and it has been an honour to provide our sustainable and integrated mining solutions for their operations. The accuracy, reliability and consistency of data is critical in the mining sector, and our solutions will be able to improve Tata Steel’s productivity & efficiency and contribute to modernize their mining operations. Tata Steel’s trust in us to create end-to-end solutions jointly with them, for the domestic and global mining industry, directly reflects on the vision we share and openness of a behemoth like Tata Steel to partner with a startup to derive the most effective solution.”

About AUS

AUS has been leading the drone technology evolution in India for commercial application since its inception at IIT Kanpur in the year 2013. AUS was the first start-up to build and deploy PPK GPS-based Survey grade fully autonomous drones in India. AUS is also the first company to get a small category drone certified by DGCA. Apart from pushing the technology benchmarks and boundaries for enterprise-grade drones, AUS has intensively worked on data collection, processing, and analytics techniques to increase the meaningful impact and value addition of the data collected by the survey-grade drones. AUS is backed by some of the well-known early-stage deep tech investors like the Auxano Capital, KARSEMVEN fund, StartupXseed Ventures, 3one4 Capital, GrowX ventures, 500 Durians, and Ashok Atluri (MD of Zen Technologies), etc.

Media Contact: Meghna Neogy | 6299404815 I Meghna.Neogy@perfectrelations.com

About Tata Steel

Tata Steel group is among the top global steel companies with an annual crude steel capacity of 34 million tonnes per annum. It is one of the world's most geographically diversified steel producers, with operations and commercial presence across the world. The group recorded a consolidated turnover of US $ 32.83 billion in the financial year ending March 31, 2022.

A Great Place to Work-Certified^TM organisation, Tata Steel Limited, together with its subsidiaries, associates, and joint ventures, is spread across five continents with an employee base of over 65,000. Tata Steel has been a part of the DJSI Emerging Markets Index since 2012 and has been consistently ranked amongst top 10 steel companies in the DJSI Corporate Sustainability Assessment since 2016. Besides being a member of ResponsibleSteel^TM, worldsteel’s Climate Action Programme and World Economic Forum’s Global Parity Alliance, Tata Steel has won several awards and recognitions including the World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse recognition for its Jamshedpur, Kalinganagar and IJmuiden Plants, and Prime Minister’s Trophy for the best performing integrated steel plant for 2016-17. The Company, ranked as India’s most valuable Metals & Mining brand by Brand Finance, featured amongst CII Top 25 innovative Indian Companies in 2021 and top 10 sustainable organisations of India Hurun Research Institute in the 2021 Capri Global Capital Hurun India Impact 50, received Steel Sustainability Champion recognition from worldsteel for five years in a row, ‘Most Ethical Company’ award 2021 from Ethisphere Institute, RIMS India ERM Award of Distinction 2021, Masters of Risk - Metals & Mining Sector recognition at The India Risk Management Awards for the sixth consecutive year, and Award for Excellence in Financial Reporting FY20 from ICAI, among several others.

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Statements in this press release describing the Company’s performance may be “forward looking statements” within the meaning of applicable securities laws and regulations. Actual results may differ materially from those directly or indirectly expressed, inferred or implied. Important factors that could make a difference to the Company’s operations include, among others, economic conditions affecting demand/ supply and price conditions in the domestic and overseas markets in which the Company operates, changes in or due to the environment, Government regulations, laws, statutes, judicial pronouncements and/ or other incidental factors.

For media enquiries contact:

Sarvesh Kumar

Chief, Corporate Communications - Tata Steel

E-mail: sarvesh.kumar@tatasteel.com